


Fatalistic Humor, or, Jokes to Make Post-Mortem

by IntelligentAirhead, obstinateRixatrix



Series: F(A) [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dreambubbles, M/M, theyre both dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 15:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntelligentAirhead/pseuds/IntelligentAirhead, https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinateRixatrix/pseuds/obstinateRixatrix
Summary: ‘Head over heels’ is an appropriate turn of phrase because falling in love is exactly like throwing yourself down an endless staircase of inconvenient emotion.





	Fatalistic Humor, or, Jokes to Make Post-Mortem

**Author's Note:**

> omfg yall this has literally been in drafts for a year. the title of this doc was 'getting a davekat revelation while walking up a goddamn mountain' because like a month after finishing f(a) I was walking up a goddamn mountain & suddenly I was like AIR I KNOW HOW WE CAN WRITE THE DAVEKAT ONESHOT TIE-IN WE WERE THINKIN OF. Here it is. A year later. 
> 
> someone left 'cut a rug motherfucker (mobius strip)' as a note in their f(a) bookmark and it's honestly stayed with me all this time I love it. I was so, so tempted to make it the title.
> 
> enjoy,,
> 
> -Stella
> 
> Well, it took us a year, but hey! What's more Homestuck than an extended hiatus? Thank you so much for sticking with Stella and me through this journey, and I hope you enjoy our lovingly crafted möbius strip, hewn from only the finest craft foam and tempered in Strider Brand Similes.
> 
> -Air

After Karkat wakes up, you feel bereft in a way you can’t quite quantify. Which is pretty weird, considering you only really know the guy from a handful of pesterlogs and however long the conversation you had with him was. It's a length you kind of know from a single point of view that only takes one timeline into account, but kind of don't from your own, subjective perspective in bubbleland. Time’s pretty meaningless here, especially when you don't have a living, breathing point of reference.

Instead of parsing through that mess of feelings about his absence, you mull over what he said, because yeah, maybe the whole isolation thing _is_ kind of a self-perpetuating ouroboros constructed out of melodramatic knock-off manure with a garnish of maudlin bullshit on the side. And while being dead is probably the perfect time to mope around melodramatically, you're pretty sure that if you keep at it, you’ll never stop.

The question is, what other options do you even have?

You _could_ try to find your friends, whether they’re from your timeline or a different one entirely, but that idea’s about as appealing as using a banana as a butter knife. Apeeling? No. Point is, you’re not keen on finding out how everyone’s coped, coping, or will cope with the news that they were doomed by virtue of SBURB arbitrarily deciding that your session was an unessential piece that got knocked off the chessboard and into the fucking fire. Especially considering they’ve had more than enough time to find a more relevant Dave to talk to. Another fun consideration: most of them definitely have a more relevant Dave to talk to. As far back as the winding conga line of dead Daves stretched before you personally kicked the bucket, you really didn't make it that far at all.

In the end, you don't actually have to make any solid (un)life choices, because a solution figuratively falls onto your lap. Or rather, involuntarily barges into your personal bubble.

In any case, you're minding your own business, putting some genuine, bona fide thought into making aforementioned unlife changes, like you’re the protagonist of a Hallmark movie right before that quintessential meet-cute (because what’s a Hallmark movie without one), when the bubble ripples with the onset of a collision. It’s not exactly a physical sensation, but it’s one that can sure as hell be felt.

A glance out the window doesn't tell you much; it looks a little like Jade’s land, minus the snow, and hey, what the hell. If you’re going to take steps to avoid this self-isolation thing, maybe leaving the house isn't a bad place to start. So you decide to explore a bit. Get the lay of the land, now that it’s stretching out like Frankenstein’s gift to geography. Apparently the good doctor decided life science isn’t nearly as fun as cobbling together mismatched strata.

Fun sure as hell doesn’t constitute skill, though; whatever logic dream bubble fusion is based on, it fucking sucks. Everything's just mashed together in an eye-searing, deadly game of Lincoln Logs. In some parts it looks kind of like an amateur haphazardly spliced the two lands together, lava and water separated by a hairline fracture that doesn't make any logistical sense. In other parts, the elements run straight into each other like rival quarterbacks at the first inning of the big game, pockets of uninhabitable islands and a fuck-ton of steam burbling into existence as this majestic, unnatural phenomenon takes place.

You don't know who you’re expecting from this shoddy patchwork of antagonistic source materials, but in between dodging around the occasional metal piece of shit and the omnipresent foliage dripping precipitation like it’s track day in gym and there’s a term paper due next period, you didn’t take the time to entertain Karkat as an option. Doesn’t stop him from being there, though: an appearance as incongruous as the mess of green and grey and red and blue around him. Your heart jumps to your throat for a hot second, except no, this— this is Karkat, but it’s not the Karkat you briefly got cozy with. For one, he’s wearing a surprising deviation from the ever present turtleneck. For another, he’s dead.

The moment he sees you, he makes a face like he got into a fight with an alchemiter and wound up with a lemon for a tongue. “Oh, fucking great,” he grouses, “you're one of the aliens.”

“I’m the alien? Says the grey-skinned douche with candy corn sticking out of his head,” you shoot back, more out of reflex than any real hostility. If you’d wanted to throw down, you would have laid out something more impressive because. Wow. Not your best.

It says a lot about just how expressive he is that you can pick up exactly how inadequate he finds that observation, which figures. You’re kind of expecting him to call you out on ‘hey you fragile fleshy douche, way to list traits inherent to my species’, but he doesn't. Instead, he took turns away with a huff. “Don't mind me, I’ll be out of your disgusting mammalian hair soon enough. I’m just taking a rare moment to get some fucking space from Vriska.”

“Who’s Vriska?”

“I would sacrifice myself to every horrifying eldritch abomination out there to experience a single iteration of _any_ universe where I could ask that same question. Count yourself lucky that I’m not in the mood to devastate your unlife and introduce you.”

Before you can respond to that, he’s already making his way off into the wild green yonder. “Look, I’m not interested in whatever antagonistic hoofbeast shit you’ve got brewing with any version of me who had the dubious pleasure of actually knowing who the fuck you are, so if you’ll _excuse_ me—”

“Wait,” you call, before he can vanish into the sunset like a ghost-cowboy in some low budget horror-western amalgamate.

“What did I just fucking—!”

“You don't know me?”

It looks like he’s about to launch a few choice words your way, something like ‘of course not you superlative insult, clean out your hear-ducts for once and blah blah extravagant reference to alien genitalia,’ but something in your voice seems to give him pause. Instead of barreling headfirst into a tirade, he lets out a heavy sigh. “No. I don’t. I don’t know the first thing about ‘humans’ because my session never got that far.” He even mimes derisive air quotes around ‘humans’, despite the air of gravitas that seems to surround that admission.

“Oh,” you say.

He waits, as if expecting some explanation, but you don't really know what else there is to add. “It’s nothing,” you say.

“Well, alright.”

“It’s just another you knew me, but not the way I’m used to us knowing each other, y’know? I mean, it sounds like you’ve run into other Daves who had a more solid dynamic with whichever Karkat they knew, and I’ve definitely run into Karkats that had a lot to say to me, but as stale as the afterlife gets, this went weirdly off-script. We had a surprisingly non-hostile chat. You told me not to talk to you, though. Or, he told me not to bother talking to other Karkats.”

It’s a little hard to tell, but you're pretty sure Karkat rolls his eyes. “He would. I would? Fuck, whatever, that’s a me thing to do.” He scoffs in some self-directed disdain. “If I told you to stay away from me, that either means I hate your guts, or I actually like you.”

“Well,” you try, “want to stick around and find out?”

It’s an offer that manages to surprise him more than it does you, but just barely.

“Out of every insufferable asshole parading through the endless torment of dream bubble purgatory, why would you want to spend even a shit-blistering second of your afterlife with me?”

“Because... you're apparently a decent dude? One of you is, at least.”

“High fucking praise.” Karkat crosses his arms, and legitimately seems to consider it. “What the fuck, why not,” is what he eventually decides. “Anything to get away from an eternity of Vriska’s heinous cackling.”

“Cool,” you say.

 

* * *

 

Karkat both is and isn’t what you’d expect, even with both his original trolling attempts and his shouty earnest heart-to-heart as reference points. Turns out, two flavors of interactions aren’t even scratching the surface of everything on offer. It’s like a goddamn buffet of yelling, with each course of expletives containing delicate nuance. After a little while, you start feeling like a sommelier, distinguishing between an oaky, subdued soapbox spiel and a fine vintage tantrum.

He has a lot of opinions about everything. If, by some miracle, he didn't have an opinion on any given facet of existence, he’s more than willing to conjure an essay on the spot to articulate exactly what he thinks as of that very second. Thanks to your inability to shut up, ever, that leaves the two of you a lot of material to go on, especially since you both constantly have to explain your respective culture-specific references.

What you don't expect is how open he is, despite being simultaneously cagey as fuck. There’s never a need to guess how he’s feeling; he’s less ‘wearing his heart on his sleeve’ and more ‘wielding it like a hand grenade’. Elder gods skirting the edge of the Furthest Ring can probably feel the aftershocks of a single emotion experienced by Karkat Vantas. And yet, he goes out of his way to avoid anything too private. Too important. As an expert in the field of dodging the ‘personal’ part of interpersonal relations, it’s pretty obvious to you, even without the repetitive refrain of ‘take a fucking guess asshole, and keep it to yourself because it’s none of your business’. You still don't know anything about his session, or how he died, but you’re intimately familiar with— also unexpected—  his thoughts on what sounds like the troll version of _50 First Dates,_ because he’s apparently someone who takes romcoms very seriously. Less unexpected, he has shit taste in movies.

You absorb a lot through proxy. With your constant exposure to Rose’s approximate knowledge of shit knows what and Jade’s comprehensive knowledge of what knows shit, you’ve had a lot of experience with that. Besides, listening to Karkat talk about movies isn’t too different from listening to John, and that context lends a lot to your understanding of the random, otherwise incomprehensible bullshit that crops up.

Some of it is obvious vocab, and you’re never going to get over the fact that the vast majority of Alternian lingo is just clunkier compound synonyms for much simpler English equivalents, but some concepts fly clear over your head. No use leaning in your seat to catch that one, Johnny, it’s out of the ballpark and there goes dad’s toupee with it.

Although, you _do_ absorb enough to know that the next dream bubble you collide with is his land. It smells really iron-y. Not to be confused with irony, though it’s got that in spades, considering you left your own land of blisteringly hot bright red shit that smells like metal only to arrive here, yet another red hot mess that smells like metal.

Still, no matter how similar the two lands are, there are some dramatic differences. And since you’ve given him the tour of your humble abode, it stands to reason for him to return the favor.

“This sure brings back memories,” he says, staring up at his house with an unreadable expression. The house in question looks like if a toddler dumped a bag of legos that, by sheer coincidence, stacked up into a slapdash temple to some chaotic deity with a vague disdain for inhabitable and-slash-or sustainable architecture. The same toddler must’ve also eaten several packs of crayons before barfing on their foray into construction, because nothing else could explain the artistic decisions you’re bearing witness to. You’re honestly impressed, admiring a particularly flattering portrait of Karkat, when out of nowhere, a piercing screech cuts through the air like some eldritch monstrosity with a chest cold rising from the subaqueous depths to announce that it was fucking pissed. Karkat perks up, heading to the back of his house, and weirdly enough, towards the sound.

“Wait, hold on, what the fuck?” You ask, grabbing his arm. “Not exactly sure what you’d call a death wish post-mortem, but why are you running straight into danger like you've got one?”

Instead of showing any measure of healthy self-preservation, Karkat shrugs you off. “Relax, it’s just my lusus.”

Right, you vaguely remember something about TZ’s lack of mom. Except it was a dragon? So, monster moms: that’s a troll thing, apparently.

“I have no fucking clue what bullshit Feferi managed to pull to bring ours in here too, but he’s pretty harmless.” He pauses, a worrying consideration overtaking his features. “Mostly harmless. He’s never met anyone  he didn't make at least some vague attempt to eat, but other than that.”

Not exactly reassuring, but you let him lead you to the back of his weird house. You’re quiet for as long as it takes to pass through the doorway, but god forbid you be able to shut up for any longer than that. “So, if you guys have your momsters kickin it in the afterlife with you, do you think there are any…” You bite the inside of your cheek. “Any humans? Aside from the Johns and Roses and Jades, I mean.” It’s a concern that hadn’t crossed your mind; you didn't realize it could be a concern, actually, because why would you consider it concerning in the first place?

Karkat shrugs. “I don't know if these lusii are memory constructs attached to the land, or ghosts like the rest of us, or whatever the fuck, but I’ve never seen any adults around. Troll or otherwise.”

“Huh.” You don’t want to deal with the tangled coil of emotional wire that’s settling in your stomach because that shit’s conductive as fuck and you’re not ready to deal with whatever shock it has in store. Luckily, you don’t have to; before you can touch that shit you round the corner and come face to face with the anthropomorphic nightmare of a marine biology grad student who’s been drawing furry commissions on the side. Jesus fuck. _“That's_ your monster mom?”

“What the fuck is a mom.” It’s barely even a question, the way he says it; more like an acknowledgment of his resignation to interspecies nonsense.

“Shit, don't ask me, but I didn't think yours was a crab.” There’s no use keeping a lid on wordplay this readily available, so you don’t even make the effort to shove it down. “No wonder you’re such a crabby dude.”

“Well, I think that signals the end of our interactions forever. If you need me, I’ll be outside, drowning myself in the sea of blood.”

“Aw, c’mon, crabpuff, don’t be like that.”

“I will be exactly _like this_ for as long as I fucking want! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a very touching and emotionally poignant reunion to get to.” He marches up to the crab monster, starting off his very touching and emotionally poignant reunion with: “Who’s here with you, asshole?”

Hallmark’s got nothing on a Vantas Production. Eat your heart out, Nicholas Sparks.

Crab monster makes more warbling screeches, prompting Karkat to make a face like he’s licked a grapefruit covered in mustard. “I see you’re as intolerably ornery as ever,” he snipes, and you can’t help but huff a laugh at that. Without turning to look, he flips you off.

As he eased into genuine conversation with his guardian crab, you can't help but notice how… at home he looks. Which makes sense, given that this is, technically, his home. And you never did exactly establish the parameters of your companionship. If this is where he draws the line and chooses to hop off the all-expense paid cruise around horror-terror-hiccup-hell, who could blame him? You wouldn’t.

Eventually, Karkat turns back to you. “You haven’t piped any verbal waste into the already putrid air in the last ten minutes,” he says. “It’s freaking me out.”

“Just thinking.”

“Since when did you have a filter between your thinkpan and your incessant chute?” He accuses.

“Now what kind of bro would I be if I got between a boy and his crab? Just didn’t want to interrupt your whole…” You gesture at papa crab’s general everything. Which prompts it to make a swipe, and wow, that’s your cue to keep your distance. “I mean, if you’re taking a break from your very emotional reunion-slash-gossip-sessh, I just wanted to know if this is, y’know… your stop.”

Karkat narrows his eyes, the way he does when he’s trying to figure something out, and it occurs to you that in all your conversations, the concept of public transportation has never come up. Feels like the kind of mundane thing that would’ve been talked about, but also, a little too mundane to even begin addressing.

“Shit, did you guys have busses? Trains? Your bee guy sounded like he lived in a city, but he also had lasers, and also I think there was someone who lived in a cave, so like, what the fuck-”

With glacial inevitability, Karkat slowly shoves his hand against your face. He doesn’t even aim for your mouth, just pushes until you shut up.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, a solemn sort of weight to his words, “but my land fucking sucks. Sorry Strider, looks like you’re stuck with me.”

“Cool,” you say.

 

* * *

 

“How the fuck do you stand yourself,” Karkat grouses, watching in disgust as you shoot some distant Dave a thumbs-up of Strider Solidarity. “Selves are the worst. Every time there’s more than one of the same person in the room, the threat of imminent buffoonery hangs overhead like a fucking guillotine.”

“Not everyone goes into conniptions at the concept of being not a giant asshole to themselves,” you say, because it’s true. The concentrated force of Karkat’s self-loathing would put an atomic bomb to shame. “Daves worked together. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ but there sure as fuck was a lot of me.”

“There was way too much me in the team.” He shakes his head in retrospective disdain. “Past Karkat was an endless siphon for blundering regret and poor life choices, and future Karkat was an asshole smug enough to power the green sun by his ego alone. Current Karkat was the only Karkat I could trust to have any modicum of competence and common sense, and look where he got me. Every Karkat is a how-to manual on gratuitous self-sabotage.”

“So, here’s a wild thought,” you dawl, about to lay down one hell of a groundbreaking concept, “have you ever considered not going for your own throat? I feel like I’ve got front row seats to the world’s most brutal combination nature documentary and self-immolation exposé.”

“That thought was the verbal equivalent of you taking an extensive dump right on my grubloaf. Thanks a lot, asshole, what’s for breakfast now?”

“Listen, as your obviously way better adjusted and all-around emotionally stable friend, it’s my sacred duty to offer you a heaping plate of realtalk in this trying time.”

“You’re a walking disaster,” Karkat said, voice flat as a mesa. “The fact that you would even—  wait.” He squints at you with all of the wariness of a decade old cat that’s just been introduced to its owner’s new beau. “You think we’re friends?”

“That was literally the worst, most anxiety-inducing way you could’ve possibly put it,” you say, still recovering from witnessing every possible hypothetical where it turns out the answer is ‘no’ in vivid, eye-searing technicolor, “but being the good pals we are I can safely say we’ve crossed the threshold. We’re bromantically entangled.”

Karkat looks pleased for all of two seconds before he realizes his face is betraying his long con of convincing everyone around him that he’s a sourpuss asshole who blows— what’s the opposite of sunshine? Void?— out of his ass. His recovery is quick, but sloppy.  “We barely know anything about each other, even without the cultural barrier of being mutual aliens in the most literal sense possible.” And he barely makes the dismount with no points for style. The judges wince in tandem.

“Does that even matter? Dude, I feel like I’ve been frog-boiled into friendship even without learning a fucking thing about you.”

“Don’t talk to me about frogs,” he shoots back, doing a flawless tuck-and-roll right under the point you were trying to make. “If I hear the slightest notion of a croak being entertained in _anyone’s_ mind, I just might reflexively shit myself with rage. I never want to be confronted with any reference to the existence of those amphibious assholes for as long as I’m dead.”

“How much of that was sincere, bonafide frog-hate, and how much of that was you being a cantankerous douche?”

“Fuck, I don't know.” He sighs, subdued in a way that signals undertones of a Genuine Deal afoot. “Sixty percent? Don’t worry about it.”

A not-insignificant amount, then. “Alright,” you amend, “so some things matter, but counterpoint: if I’ve gotta avoid uncomfy topics, I’ve gotta know what they are.”

“Counterpoint to your counterpoint: my fully justified frog-related reservations aren’t your problem!”

“Counterpoint cubed: bros don’t prod at each other's frog-related hang-ups.”

Karkat scowls. “There’s no hanging up, down, or otherwise! This was just about how much frogs objectively suck, and you derailed our un-lives into an irrelevant, conversational equivalent of them! Because you’re a jackass! Friendship over because obviously there’s an impassible cultural barrier here called: you’re a douchebag.”

Apparently, this is the hill he’s chosen to die on. Again. “Come on,” you say, “you're really gonna make me be the emotional transparency guy?”

“You can’t threaten me with that, everyone and their convoluted ecto-relative knows you’re 'too cool' for 'emotions'.”

The amount of defanged disdain in those air quotes is off the charts, and of course you’re going to have to match how goddamn contradictory he is even if you’re going against the grand master of being a walking paradox. So, at some inscrutable nexus of ironic sincerity, you lay a solemn hand-prong on his scapular whatever. “I’ll make an exception just for you.”

“It’s too bad as of just now, I’ve officially terminated our friendship. The paperwork is being processed as we speak.”

“Well, Jesus fuck, knowing bureaucracy that’ll take at least three months. Ever visit a DMV?”

Karkat makes a frustrated sound, throwing up his hands. “Why is this so important to you?”

“I’ll back off if that’s what you’re legit asking me to do, but like, I’m asking because I don't want to make conversations painful and-slash-or awkward as shit. Ideally, people enjoy talking to other people. Aliens. Whatever. And I don’t want to shove some accidental verbal grenade down your throat because that sucks on both ends.” It’s hard to figure out what shit’s off limits with a guy you _just_ established you were friends with two seconds back. Yeah, there have been things kind of obviously off limits: death deets, for one. Things that have been not-so-obviously off limits: frogs.

There’s a long moment that actually isn't that long as Karkat stares at you, caught in some internal battle you can't even begin to guess at. At first you think he’s going to stomp off and sulk for a while; he always seems to be fighting off his own naturally platonic inclinations with a stick while simultaneously wielding a welcoming fruit basket to shove at anyone offering any degree of positive attention, so you wouldn't be surprised if your sudden candor re: Actually Caring About Him was a little overwhelming. It's a little overwhelming for you, honestly. It feels like it shouldn't be, but it is.

“Fuck,” he says, finally. “You're right. Wipe that smug look off your face.”

“No smug here, it's just my face.”

“Yeah, well, your face permanently exudes a smug aura by the unfortunate nature of your repugnant genetics.” Karkat pinches the bridge of his nose-nub, letting out an explosive sigh. “You’re right, but let's just drop it for now. We’ll talk about it later, I swear. Let’s… fuck, I don't know, can we get some fucking levity in here?”

“I mean, sure,” you say, “but I have no idea what you're after, dude. Like what, do you want to engineer a goofy alien convo in the least organic way possible?”

“That sounds fucking fantastic.” Karkat spreads his arms with a dispassionate sort of motion. “You said you wanted to know shit, right? Here’s an official invitation.”

Well, if there’s one thing you’re good at, it's changing gears and going with the flow. When you’re not stuck in one of your extended metaphors, at least. “Alright, here’s one subject change coming right up: why the fuck do you guys have a Troll Will Smith.”

“What?” He wrinkles up his face. “How should I know? I wasn't the one who made your universe, that was some other Karkat.”

“Come on, though,” you prompt. “It’s gotta be weird, right? How many troll-human counterparts are there running around? Did I have a troll counterpart? Did you have a human counterpart? Was Karl Vander running around Milwaukee?”

“Why Milwaukee!?” Karkat asks, hackles up and eyes primed to squint-glare with the intensity of a laser pointer.

“Dude,” you snort, “do you even know what Milwaukee is?”

“I don’t have to. There’s obviously some derisive connotation to it if you’re putting some hypothetical human-me in that specific location!”

There actually wasn't. You just threw out a random city, but you’ll be damned to disappoint despite knowing a maximum of one whole fact about the good ol’ midwest.

You shrug for maximum effect. “Well, it _is_ the only place with enough cheese in the universe that could possibly compete with your taste.”

The completely expected, “Fuck you,” in response sounds vaguely affectionate to your discerning hear-holes. Or maybe it doesn't, but he hasn't stormed off, so you're in the clear.

“You had cheese right? Like, you could just go into a store and just buy cheese? Or did you have to suplex your own cowbeast.” Honestly, knowing what you know about Alternia, the answer could be either. Or both.

“We had dairy _and_ dairy products,” Karkat confirms, without really addressing the ‘how’ of it. “I’m sure your feeble human thinkpan is reeling from the revelation.”

“What, all of them? You tellin’ me aliens across galaxies are slammin’ down an orange creamsicle?” Actually, you think you remember Terezi trying to lord that over you. The creamsicle thing, at least.

Karkat scoffs. “I mean, I never had one, but I know what those are. There’s a limit to what your thermal hull can stock when you live in the middle of nowhere.”

“Man, I hear that.”

At that he stares at you, bewildered. “Didn't you live in a city?” He asks. “Those are supposed to be opposite of nowhere.”

“Well yeah, but it’s not like I ate much besides easy mac and third-rate ramen.” Besides, it wasn’t like you could use the fridge for actual food.

Still, saying it out loud… it's not a good vibe. And Karkat doesn't say anything, just waits on wherever you're going with this, so fuck, you just keep going.

“I guess in hindsight it seems kind of weird because I’m pretty sure there was like a corner store across the street— not on a corner so they really dropped the ball on that one—  but nope, it was instant food central. Couldn't fit a single thing in the fridge with all the swords in the way, which absolutely had to be there for some reason, but hey, at least there were cherries sometime. That’s a fruit. Healthy living. That’s just how it goes, right? Especially when you live with someone who’s… he was a busy guy. I mean, kind of weird but not that weird right?” You ask, dreading an answer either way.

“Dave,” Karkat says, and there’s a tentative sympathy that makes your stomach churn.

“Oh, jeez.” You laugh, trying to blunt the hysterical edge in your voice into something less obvious, but it doesn't quite work. You still sound like you’re on the cusp of an elegant swan-dive right into some not-so-great revelations. “We tried so hard to avoid the black hole of personal hangups, and here we are, dragged kicking and screaming by the inevitable clutch of gravity. Fuck, didn't mean to make shit uncomfy. Sorry about that.”

“No, it’s… it’s okay.” He reaches out a hand that stops just short of you, and after a little deliberation, drops it to your shoulder.

“Fuck.” He jolts, jerking back as if singed, but it’s not- you didn’t want that, the contact was good, the contact was nice, so you lurch forward and kind of crash into him. “Sorry,” you say again. “I’m sorry.”

For a species built for murder, trolls give decent hugs.

 

* * *

 

So apparently ‘purposeful emotional transparency’ is like a gateway drug because after that there's just no holding back. You and Karkat just talk. About anything. About everything. And sometimes it's like an awkward tango where both of you are just stomping all over each other’s toes in a desperate and clumsy attempt to come anywhere close to approaching rhythmic cohesion, except neither of you know when the music’s going to start. Or how to dance. At all.

“You know what's the weirdest thing?” Karkat asks, as the two of you are lying on the floor of your room. “Being dead is such a fucking relief.”

“Hey, what,” you say.

“It is! I don't have to worry about dying, because I’m already dead! Fuck the imperial drones, what are they going to do, kill me twice?” He laughs, somewhat hysterically. “Fuck the imperial drones! Fuck the Condesce! Fuck Alternia! Nobody wanted me alive! Well, mission accomplished, and all it took was the apocalypse! I’m sure everyone would agree it was a small price to pay, if they weren’t all dead.” He draws into himself. “Fuck, I miss it.”

And here’s where your solo comes in. Do tangos have solos? Whatever, the spotlight’s on you, and even with your sudden uptick in experience with this sort of thing, you still stumble. Is this something you should keep your distance for? Is he just venting? Is this a serious feelings jam? Is this something you’ll just end up making worse with your egregious cultural ignorance?

“Sorry,” is what you test the waters with.

“About what, my inability to get over myself? Get in line.” Karkat sighs, winding down from omnidirectional rage to his ever-present brand of self-loathing. “I can't believe I’m still hung up over this shit. What’s the point? Stab me in the fucking pump biscuit and I bet I wouldn't even bleed.”

“Hey, no, don't be like that,” you say, automatically reaching out to put your hand over his. You don't think he’s actually planning on whipping out his sickle, but better safe than sorry.

“This doesn't matter,” he insists. “None of it matters!”

“Maybe it doesn't, but it matters to you. Problems don't go away when you're dead, dude. It just means you got the rest of forever to be fucked up by them.”

“It’s fucking bullshit, is what it is. Some afterlife.” He scoffs. “Out of all the Karkats I could be, I’m stuck as this asshole for however long this lasts.”

“I like this Karkat,” you say, then back the train up so it doesn’t derail into Strider-junction instead of staying on track to Self-Worth City. “Like, not a fan of him having to lug around all this cultural baggage that’s getting him down, but…” You flounder, moving to hold his hand more comfortably in your own. “The problem isn't with you. Like, it sucks that you have to deal with this, but the problem’s never been with you; it’s been with the fact that you got a raw cut of the asshole deck in terms of like, your entire species, but you didn't deserve that shit, and you’re trying to deal with it.” Eye contact sure is something that seems appropriate here, but even with your shades in the way, it's a little too much, and you duck your head. “So like. Don't wish you weren't you is the bottom line here, I guess. ‘Cause the only problem I see here is how you’ve been treated, not… not who you are. You're you, and there’s no one else like you in any of the bubbles out there.”

“A nice sentiment, but objectively untrue,” Karkat says, interrupting your pep talk with grade-A pedantry. But hey, he's perked up enough to be a pedantic shithead.

“We’re having a moment, you douche.” You elbow him for good measure. “Look, you're the best Karkat I know. The one that means the most to me. I mean, would you just hop into another Dave's bubble?”

“Of course not,” he says, not even having to think about it, and isn't that a relief.

“It's the same for me,” you say.

“...Oh.” There's a contemplative lilt you can't quite parse but at least he’s feeling better, you think.

 

* * *

   
"Dave," Karkat starts, in his 'heavy shit’ voice. "There's something I need to tell you."

Well that’s a terrifying lead-in, but you're already dead, so there's a limit to how devastating any sudden development can be. "Alright, shoot."

"Dave, I..." he falters, nervous in a way you've never seen before, but if Karkat Vantas has something to say, fuck if it doesn't get the fuck said.

"I want to be there for you."

It comes out in a rush, and you don't even really get the chance to process what got the fuck said before he steamrolls on. "I want to know what's on your mind, and I want you to know what's going on in mine. I don't know how this happened, but fuck, you’re really important to me, and I've never..." His voice drops low, quiet; "I've never felt as comfortable with anyone as I do with you."

There’s kind of a strange atmosphere, you think, and maybe it’s how Karkat lays it out like it's supposed to be this groundbreaking confession. While it’s kind of nice (if a bit embarrassing) to hear out loud, it feels like a threshold that’s long since been crossed, in your humble opinion. So you just kind of.

"Cool. Same, bro."

Karkat deflates, which means you've absolutely said the exact wrong thing.

“I mean,” you try, in an attempt to salvage what’s apparently spiraled into the flaming wreckage of your own incompetence, “thanks? I don't think I've ever been this emotionally transparent in my entire life, or my un-life for that matter, and I'm sincerely glad you feel that way about me. I've told you shit I don't think I'd ever tell anyone else, and I want to be there for you too. I'm glad I can be someone you can trust.”

Better, but you still feel like you're off the mark. He looks kind of torn, actually, as he reaches up and caresses your cheek in what's a weirdly intimate gesture that should've made your breath catch in your throat. There's a long moment where he seems to search your face for a sign you don't know, trying to figure out what he wants to say.

"You don't know shit about anything, Strider," is apparently what he decides on.

"That's a given, Vantas."

 

* * *

 

With Karkat around, you actually end up talking to a lot of trolls. A lot more than you used to, at least - instead of drifting by each other with the dream bubble equivalent of nodding as you pass on the sidewalk of the afterlife, they’ve got shit to say. Not necessarily to you, but you’re collateral damage in the friendly fire of Karkat’s bustling social life. Every Karkat’s bustling social life.

You’ve started to recognize the friendlier ones, and this one in particular is extremely friendly. There’s barely enough time to notice the landscape changing around you before Karkat’s tackled to the ground by an olive blur.

“Karkitty!” She yells, rubbing her cheek against his. “It’s so good to see you!”

“If you don't get off me in the next ten seconds, I’m rolling the both of us off into the nearest pool of lava!” He yells right back, struggling against her vice grip. “Who the fuck are you with! Why is every bubble we launch ourselves bulge-first into some damp abomination of incompatible geography!”

There’s not a lot of geography lava’s compatible with, but he’s got a point. You don’t know what the ratio of damp lands to dry lands is, but this land — like a bunch of others— has a shit-ton of water. In fact, it looks like your house is now smack-dab in the middle of a giant fishbowl. A _sticky_ fishbowl. So that’s neat.

“Don’t be such a sourpuss,” she says, despite Karkat’s continued attempts to remove her via suplex. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen one of you!”

“The last you wasn't nearly this clingy,” he snaps, even as he seems to accept that this is his un-life now. Stuck with a troll furry until the end of time.

“Yeah, sorry about that! It's pawsible she's not ofur you yet.”

“Oh,” Karkat says. “So you're..?”

“I have to make up for all the hugs I was too shy to give you!”

“Fuck your personal development,” he grouses, but it's way too obvious that he’s just being ornery for the sake of appearance. Obvious to cat-troll too, judging from how she giggles.

“I’m sure your Nepeta would’ve wanted you know she appurreciated how nice you were about it—”

“How what,” Karkat says.

“— but in hindsight it was purretty embarrassing! Plus, think of how much clawser we would’ve been if I wasn’t so hung up on my silly crush!”

“How much what?” You ask.

“Closer,” she clarifies.

“Yeah, well,” Karkat huffs, “you would’ve had to get through my feculent morass of personal problems anyway so you didn’t miss out on much. Glad you got to your senses and developed better taste.”

“Don’t be like that!” Cat-troll scolds. “But Feferi _is_ purretty great.”

“Oh, no shit?” By now they’re kind of settled in some strangely casual hug-slash-chokehold, settling down for one hell of a gossip session. “Never saw that coming. Then again, you’re both obnoxiously chipper, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Right?” Nepeta sighs wistfully, “I really should've talked to her more when I was alive. Even if this is a diffurent her.”

“Please tell me Equius flipped the fuck out, nothing more would give me eternal peace than knowing that piece of shit went into conniptions.”

“He actually _fainted,”_ Nepeta laughs, and even though it’s a weird, hiccoughing purr of a sound that vocal chords shouldn’t be capable of producing in any plane of existence, it’s contagious.

“Holy fuck, this is the best thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t tell me anything else; death was absolutely worth the knowledge that Equius tumbled off his high-fucking-hoofbeast like a concussed arbor-beast that missed a branch in its quest for food.” After Karkat’s done roleplaying Mean Trolls, his face sets into something more serious. More sincere. “You look happy. I’m glad it worked out.”

“I am! I mean, I never thought I'd ever be with who should've been the future empurress, but… it's better than I thought it could ever be.” She grins, basically radiating unabashed and sincere glee, and boy is it blinding. “I’m just glad we all have someone.”

Um, what.

“Nepeta,” Karkat says, as solemnly as someone can possibly be while in a partial headlock, “shut the fuck up.”

“Aw, you don't have to be shy!”

“I know you can eviscerate me in two seconds but if you don't stop right there, I swear on my unlife—”

“Sheesh, alright,” she concedes, pouting all the while. And, maybe you’re reading into it? ‘Having someone’ doesn't imply romance necessarily, but also, it sure did sound like she was offhandedly dropping an atomic bomb of implied homoerotic subtext, and it sure did sound like Karkat was on the same page as her, so like, what the fuck.

It’s probably a good thing it takes you so long to process all that because there goes the cat-troll, waving goodbye, off to make out with her girlfriend who’s a fish or something, and she’s barely out of sight before you blurt out, “So, what... are we—  are we boyfriends?”

“No,” Karkat says, but weirdly cagey. “Not really.”

What the fuck. “‘Not really’ isn't really an answer, crabpuff.”

“Not according to your bullshit human standards, apparently!”

Woah, what? “Karkat—”

“Just ignore her. I don't know why I thought such a transparent, explicit, _classically_ pale confession would work on someone who doesn't even know what quadrants are! I was so sure I was reading the atmosphere right, but hey! _Apparently_ romance is a moot point when it comes to aliens, so why bother trying to get even an echo of a fragment of a _hint_ of clarity in this fucking—”

"Can I kiss you?”

Now that shuts him up.

For all of two seconds, at least. "What? Why!?"

"What do you mean why? If we've been boyfriends the entire time I feel like I've been missing out on some prime smooching opportunities.” You’re shooting for nonchalant with maybe a shade of irreverence, but you think you've overshot straight into clumsy desperation. Fuck.

And his response to that is to… laugh, which makes you think, well, time to jump out the window because a lava-bath wouldn’t be nearly as agonizing to endure, except, there’s a distinct note of self-deprecation. “It figures,” he says, “even when I'm dead I can't get this shit right.” He shakes his head, continuing his trend of being really fucking confusing. You're on the edge of your seat. “What the fuck, why not.”

“‘Why not’? Oh, Mr. Darcy," you deadpan, because as relieved as you are, it’s a pretty anticlimactic resolution to the soap opera of your afterlife. "Come on, I thought you were supposed to be the romance dude."

"You want romance?" He asks, almost incredulous, with a worrying sort of challenge in his tone. "I'll give you _romance."_

Which is your only warning before he takes your hand and twirls you right into a dip. You don't really have a choice but to hook your other arm around his neck, at least, not if you don't want to overbalance and send the both of you sprawling on the ground, which would be absolutely mortifying and not hilarious enough to be worth ruining Karkat’s grand moment. Pros: right now, the two of you are _incredibly_ close. Cons: right now, the two of you are _incredibly close._ Be still, your unbeating heart.

"Dave Strider," he says, quiet in a way you've heard exactly once before, a strikingly tender exhalation that ghosts your cheek, "you're the most insufferable prick that could ever possibly exist in every single permutation of Paradox Space, but any second without you in my unlife would be worse than dying a thousand deaths. And as someone who’s dead, I know what I’m talking about."

Well that certainly was a line that could’ve come right out one of his shitty novels. There’s a  conviction that _should_ come off as overwrought, but instead, it's just way too sincere, and you’re…charmed, a little, and that’s probably the most confusing part of all this because you’re not exactly a preteen girl mooning over tall, dark, and emotionally unstable. And yet... at this moment, you feel a kinship with that hypothetical stereotype. After all, you're practically swooning in the arms of your paranormal love interest. Apparently he’s not done because he cants his head tantalizingly close, almost imperceptibly so. "I don't know what this is, but I've never wanted anyone the way I've wanted you. I've never wanted anyone _more_ than I've wanted you."

"What the fuck," you say, breathless, right before you grab him by the face and kiss the smug grin right off his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Stella: omg tho air do you remember that davekat revelation I had a year ago  
> Stella: it was  
> Stella: 'what if one-sided whirlwind palerom while dave's dragged along for the ride'  
> Stella: 'and then they smooch'  
> Air: Incredible


End file.
